The Feminist Griotehttp://thefeministgriote.com
The Go-to Feminist for all things relevantMon, 08 Feb 2016 17:32:35 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.6.1#BlackWomenMatter & #InternalAbolitionhttp://thefeministgriote.com/blackwomenmatter-internalabolition/
http://thefeministgriote.com/blackwomenmatter-internalabolition/#commentsMon, 08 Feb 2016 17:32:35 +0000http://thefeministgriote.com/?p=2297On November 18th, 2015, I was invited to FIU North to give a talk on #BlackWomenMatter. I was encouraged to make the speech available and here it is. Happy Reading it is a #longread.

On November 18th, 2015, I was invited to FIU North to give a talk on #BlackWomenMatter. I was encouraged to make the speech available and here it is. Happy Reading it is a #longread.

Happy Black History Month.

In the words of my favorite rapper Jay-Z, “First of all, I wanna thank my connect who is the most important person with all due respect.” Clearly Jay-Z is talking about his drug connect, but that is not what I am talking about. In this context, my “connect” is Meredith Morgan, the Coordinator of the Women’s Center here t FIU. I want to take this time out to thank you Meredith for inviting me to give this keynote.

I met Meredith last year on a scholarship committee. We were both asked to sit on for an organization that shall remain nameless. I remember that day of the meeting vividly. I remember what I had on and the feeling I had as I entered the building. I walked into the space and took my seat next to Meredith, who turned to me and said hello and was super nice. I must admit: I had my game face on. I did not know what to expect from this group or meeting, but I knew I was going to be the token in the room and I was preparing myself for it. I had that fear of how my Blackness would be received in these particular group dynamics, which lead me to tread cautiously in this space. I said hello to her, but I was trying not to be too “friendly.” However, by the end of the meeting, Meredith had won my heart because in the meeting, she had the courage to shut down this supremely privileged white woman who was taking up too much and sucking up all the oxygen in the room. I chuckled to myself and in that moment, realized that perhaps Meredith was about that intersectional feminist life and that I could at least give her chance I do not regret my decision.

At the final meeting for this committee, my worst fear came to fruition when a supremely racist thing happened to me. I remember feeling very exposed and alone. I remember feeling that my Blackness was a problem, and not the system that I was critiquing and highlighting to this predominately white POC passing group. After the incident, Meredith was the only ally who reached out to me in an intentional way. She listened to me, centered my feelings, asked me what I wanted, and used her privilege to give voice to my thoughts, feelings, and concerns to the powers that be.

One of the biggest mistakes that allies make is not remembering that Black folks and more specifically, Black women, have feelings and we too need tenderness and space. What I appreciated most is that Meredith checked in on my humanity. To me, that was huge because that is not always a benefit that is afforded to me. As a Black woman who is not thin or soft-spoken, folks tend to think that I have no feelings or that words don’t impact me.

This is me being vulnerable, so brace yourself for impact: The truth of the matter is that I am a very sensitive soul who often finds it hard to be in the world because the world is not kind or made for sensitive folks who like me.

I was genuinely shocked when Meredith asked if I was interested in doing this talk after she discovered an online article I had written for Salon years ago. I meet lots of white feminist allies who want nothing more than to pilfer and pillage my #BlackGirlMagic and genius. Everyone wants to meet with me and have me be their personal social justice Iyanla Vanzant and fix their social justice organizations, committees, and lives. Folks always want to be their magical negro or their wet nurse. In the end, of course, they always want this labor for free and more importantly, without accountability. Very few white feminist allies seek to pay me for my #BlackGirlMagic or truly center my voice. Therefore, I would like to thank Meredith for being the kind of ally who makes intentional space for Black women to speak for themselves and who creates space for the emotional, intellectual, and physical labor of Black women to be paid. One of the easiest ways for white women be complicit in the violence against women of color is to not pay women of color for their labor.

I am so honored to have this opportunity to give the keynote as we honor International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, with an emphasis on #Blackwomenmatter. I am just a regular hyphenated American woman who was born and raised in Dade County. I am the product of Haitian immigrant parents who came to the U.S. on a raft back in the 80’s due to being reared and socialized under back-to-back oppressive dictatorships. Right before my parents left Ayiti, they had recently met and chose to be in love and my momma had a seed growing in her belly whose name was Lutze. My parents took the treacherous sojourn from Ayiti to Miami without being sure that their Black immigrant bodies would be welcomed in the U.S. As it turns out, their Black immigrant bodies were not welcomed in the U.S.

My parents suffered grave racism and xenophobia from white folks. My parents also had to deal with not actually being welcomed in this country by African-Americans either. I say that to caution people of color, especially Black folks, that we must be careful not to become complicit in xenophobia and the erasure of immigrants as they seek to enter our country. My parents were forced to live in a country that at the time, said in order to protect oneself from HIV, which had just recently and violently exploded onto the scene, one needed to avoid the three H’s: homosexuals, hemophiliacs, and Haitians. That was the context in which my parents were daring to live, love, and raise a girl child.

I love talking about my parents’ migration story. Their migration story has impacted me and shaped by Blackness and the way I see the world. I am not ashamed to say that my parents came on a raft. In a place like Miami, I am often surprised by the amount of folks who carry shame about migrating here via the waters. Nobody wants to be seen as a ref or as the “the boat people.” In my day job, I work with youth and do anti-bias/anti-prejudice work. I help young people reclaim their stories of times they were othered or participated in the othering of a peer. A huge crux of the work requires the kids to talk about their family’s migration story and how their family ended up in Miami. As the kids stand up to discuss their families’ migration stories, many of the youth use the disclaimer and say, “My parents did not come on a boat.” And again, that cultural shame and immigrant shame rears its head. It makes me sad, but I get it. I proudly proclaim that my parents came on a raft. I say this knowing the connotations and feelings that it may bring up for some of you. I am proud of this aspect of my parents’ story, because it has shaped the human being that I am today. You see, as the Somali-born poet Warshine Shire says, “No one puts their child on a boat unless the water is safer than the land.” My pregnant mother went days without food and water because even back then, both of my parents knew that Black lives and Black freedom mattered. Langston Hughes asked, “What happens to a dream deferred?” I have the answer. In the case of my mother, you put that dream you are carrying on a boat and give birth to her in the United States and hope and pray she survives and becomes a Black woman who can own herself outright.

So here I am, Lutze, aka the FeministGriote on the Twitter streets. I am the oldest of four and the only girl child in my family. Therefore, it was inevitable that I would grow up to be a big ol’ feminist. As a little girl, I always got the sense that for me, life was going to be harder because of my gender. I was expected to clean more, be more responsible, to care for others above myself, and if I had any care left, I could ration some to myself. I was also expected to do the feeling for the men in my life.

I am the proud product of a historically Black college, Florida Memorial to be exact. It was at Flo Mo that I found Black feminist thought and Dr. Keshia Abraham, who became my first real life example of what a free Black woman looks like. It was also at Flo Mo where my life was saved. When I went back to college, I was considered a non-traditional student because I was a little older than the rest of the kids. When I first graduated Miami Central, I attended Wesleyan in Macon, GA and lasted only a semester. I came back to Miami and matriculated on and off at Miami-Dade North, but fell in the trap of working and had to put my dreams of graduating college on the back burner.

One day as I was sitting at my bank job and feeling like the end was near. I hated my job, I hated my life, I hated the romantic relationship I was in, and there were some major signs of a recession starting to rear its head. The recession was my way out of my misery. I knew that I was going to get fired from the bank soon for not making my loan goals, so I started applying at Florida Memorial and I waited for emancipation day.

Growing up, I was deeply impacted by the show “A Different World” and always wanted the Black college experience. I found out that there was an HBCU here in Miami and I applied. When I entered Flo Mo, I was exactly like the character Jalessa from the show “A Different World.” I was a little older than everyone and had a little bit of lived experiences under my belt and of course, I had lots of thoughts and opinions about everything. I majored in English literature and concentrated my studies on Black women’s literature, which that was the specific thing that saved me. I read books and critical essays that were written by Black women for Black women. It is at Florida Memorial that I became conscious and stopped being a patriarchal princess and awakened my sociopolitical consciousness. Reading the autobiography of Assata Shakur planted the seed in my mind that Black women are powerful, magical, and vital to any sociopolitcal movement that is serious about the liberation of Black folks. At Flo Mo, which is the home of the Negro National anthem “Lift Every Voice,” I was surrounded by Black excellence and every professor and administrator irrespective of gender and race reminded me that Black Lives not only mattered, but that Black thought mattered, Black discourse mattered, and Black cool mattered and that Blackness was a vital and crucial part of sustaining the world at large. It is in undergrad that I made contact with the true source of my power, which is the power that resides within. I also learned about the collective power of community.

I am a woman who tweets too much and so I’d like to shout out my smartphone for being my weapon, my tool, and for reminding me that I am connected to a global network of dope ass Black women!

I say thank you again for having me. I start this talk by holding space for the Syrian refugees and ALL the lives lost in terrorist attacks in Nigeria, Kenya, Beirut, Baghdad, Paris, and Charleston, South Carolina. I also want to center this talk on ALL the Black bodies that have been murdered by the state. More specifically, I want to posit the lives of Black women and girls who have been killed by the state and who didn’t have thousands of folks marching on their behalf #sayhername ,#SandraBland, #RekiaBoyd, #AyanaStanleyJones, # MiriamCarey, #MyaHall,#NatashMcKenna, #TanishaAnderson, and #KathrynJohnston, who who was 92 years young when the Atlanta police performed a no-knock raid on her home and killed mother Johnston. Not only did the police have the wrong address, but they subscribed to the “shoot first, ask questions later” mentality. I also want to hold space for trans folks being that this week is Trans Awareness Week and unfortunately, this Friday November 20th is Trans Day of Remembrance. I would like to place special emphasis on the myriad of trans women of color who are killed for simply daring to be their authentic selves in a transphobic, racist, misogynistic world. I also want to pause and state clearly that #BlackTransLivesMatter. We must #sayhername: #ZellaZiona #KeshiaJenkins #JasmineCollins and #KeshiaBlige are all trans women who were killed. The life expectancy for trans women of color is 35 years young and even when these women’s lives have been savagely cut short, they are further subjected to violence by being misgendered in death by the media and often by their loved ones. They are then forced to lie beneath tombstones that do not reflect their truth.

I also start this talk by holding space for the “sassy” young Black girls in our school systems who are disproportionately impacted by the school-to-prison pipeline. I hold space for queer, femme, female-bodied folk who have been violated on college campuses, but will never march or write a blog post about it because they are too busy soldiering on. This talk is for you!

I am not here to lecture you. I am already on a college campus and therefore I respect the intellengentsia present within these walls. It is also not lost on me that I am addressing dope ass Black women student leaders, who I know are out here getting it and killing it in every arena because perfectionism is the price Black women pay in order to occupy academic spaces that are diverse in name only. So, this talk is going to be a sister-friend talk; an intimate Twitter chat, if you will. Consider me your big sister or cool young auntie who came to see about you because I care. I want to center this talk on the topic of internal abolition. I recently watched a talk that bell hooks gave at the New School with Darnell Moore, a gay, Black, cis feminist man who is an editor at the Feminist Wire. He used the phrase “internal abolition” and that phrase blew my mind. It stopped me dead in my tracks. I mean, I really paused to evaluate myself and the work I am doing to free myself.

#BlackLivesMatter is a deeply radical statement, but only to folks who ain’t Black or folks who are committed to upholding white supremacy. Unfortunately, people of color often uphold and participate in white supremacy. Like Zora Neale Hurston said, “All your skin folk ain’t your kin folk.” Globally, Black people have always known that #BlackLivesMatter. As I mentioned earlier, my parents knew that #BlackLivesMatter when they decided to posit their freedom and seek refuge in this host country. My ancestors knew #BlackLivesMatter back in 1804 on the island of Ayiti. My ancestors took up arms and violently and rightfully decentered and unseated their white oppressors and did so knowing that #BlackLivesMatter. These enslaved Africans had no blueprint for what freedom was nor did they know, in 1804, how daring it was to affirm their humanity or the long-term sociopolitical impact it would have on Ayiti more than 200 years later. When Harriet Tubman, one my absolute favorite ancestral mentors, dared to see herself as free, she took her freedom into her own hands. Harriet Tubman went back and freed other enslaved Black Africans. She, no doubt, knew on a cellular level that #BlackLivesMatter and she was willing to baptize herself in that knowledge and go seek converts, serving as our John Baptist. BlackLivesMattered so much to Tubman she had a shotgun in her hand while she led others to freedom, just in case anyone needed a reminder that Black freedom was a serious matter and would move forward by any means necessary.

That is the power and beauty of Black women: We love hard, but we still have our shotgun in our hand.

However, when I think about BlackWomenMatter, it is deeply rooted in spirituality or as Audre Lorde called it, “the erotic.” Audre Lorde defined the erotic this way: “There are many kinds of power, used and unused, acknowledged or otherwise. The erotic is a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognized feeling.”

When I speak of spirituality, I am speaking of the deepest part of ourselves where the soul resides and where the truth of who we are truly reigns. That deep part of ourselves that always knows we are worthy, we are lovable, and we matter! Although the architects of the Black Lives Matter movement happen to be three queer Black women, the movement tends to center Black cis hetero men who are killed by the state. The truth of the matter is that our communities have not always centered Black women’s freedom.

In part, I think it is because that we as Black women often think too much about the collective and less about ourselves as autonomous liberated individuals, who also happen to be part of a collective. The Civil Rights Movement tends to be told through the eyes of the men who were the towering figures, but rarely is there equal attention paid to the women who organized, who were the foot soldiers, and who chose to love these flawed and often philandering men into their greatness.

Fast forward to 2015 and in the words of Future and Drake, “What a time to be alive.” Black women are running the yard, the white house, movements, direct action protests, Twitter, Instagram, Thursday nights on ABC, and every other corner of the universe that we choose to bless with our Black excellence and #BlackGirlMagic. We must ensure that this time around that history gets it right, we MUST tell our own stories and center our wins and our leadership. As Chinua Achibe wote, “Until the lions have their own historians, the history, the hunt will always glorify the hunter.” Therefore, I urge you all to document and record your stories. Take visual notes of your lives and the movements you are leading and participating in and tell your side of the story often and don’t minimize your awesomeness when telling your story.

In my humble opinion, the biggest ally and the natural ally of Black women is Black women. Black women will ride for each other in ways that Black men can’t because more often than not, their allegiance to sexism, toxic masculinity, patriarchy, and misogyny robs them of the ability to hold space for Black women. This truth also applies to gay men, who are also actors in misogyny. White women often fail to be good allies to Black women because although white women may understand gender issues, they don’t get the intersectionality piece of how race and gender intersect. Coming to intersection from an intellectual standpoint ain’t the same as living your life at the intersection. Like I always say, “My intersections have intersections.” White women live in a world where their femininity is heralded and protected by any means necessary. How many mass shooters have mentioned protecting white women or being rejected by white women as just cause to exact their domestic terrorism? Emmet Till, who allegedly whistled at a white woman, was savagely murdered. White femininity is considered the holy grail and this is a luxury tax Black femininity has never been afforded.

Too often, white women refuse to name the ways in which they play vital roles in upholding white supremacy. We tend to engender white supremacy and see it as a white man’s problem, but it is not. In my experience, my most violent oppressors have been white women posing as intersectional allies, friends, or bosses.

So Black women we all we got, and praise Beysus for this beautiful truth. Like I said, this talk is about internal abolition. So ask yourself: Have you deeply considered what it is that you need to internally free yourself? Are we pluralizing our understanding and context of freedom? Otherwise, there is no one way to achieve Black freedom. We need to be talking about freedom! If BlackWomenMatter, then we have to imagine what it might look like to be happy in these United States. The vision of the U.S. has always been fashioned by the white gaze and more specifically, the white male gaze, but what would it look like if Black folks – and more importantly, Black women, fashioned the U.S. in our image? Many of your families have been been part of this country since its inception. Therefore, this country is yours in a way that whiteness cannot claim. So, what do you want from your country and what does your country owe you? As astute, radical Black women, we are good at being able to name our systems of oppression and our oppressors, but are we equally well-versed in being able to name those things that will liberate us, make us happy, and make us the carefree Black women that we often embody in our style of dress, but not in consciousness?

Black women, we are the living and breathing embodiment of “ride or die.” We ride hard for our communities, our kids, and our lovers. But I am not yet fully convinced that we ride for ourselves as fiercely. If #BlackWomenMatter, then what are we doing with this knowledge? Do we listen to our bodies when they tell us that they can’t go another day of being ignored and abused? Are we centering our self-care? It is one thing to free yourself and it is another thing to claim freedom over that free self. As we meditate on the idea that #BlackWomenMatter, I ask: Who are we talking to when we make this declarative statement? I stand before you as a Black woman who has to weekly – and sometimes daily – remind myself that I matter and that I have the right to take up space like I matter.

My favorite book is “Sula,” which I consider to be the greatest Black love story written by one of the greatest American writers, Toni Morrison. This book is about a complicated friendship between two bff’s, Nel and Sula. In “Sula,” Morrison writes, “Sula was so scared that she had mutilated herself to protect herself.” How many times have you mutilated yourself in the name of protecting yourself? How many times have you truncated yourself, edited yourself, made yourself small, how many times have you sacrificed and diminished yourself for the benefit of the movement, your community, your family, and lovers? What did you get in return for this service? Unrequited love, a march, affirmation, belonging, or just another scar and wound that you had to watch scab, but never really heal?

Black women, we are awesome at marching for folks and will be in solidarity with everybody and their momma, but we need to ask ourselves are we on our side and are we in radical solidarity with ourselves?

In the words of the Miami philosopher Ebony Rhodes, “The only thing that is holding Black women back is who we are indebted to.” Who do you feel indebted to? Your past, your perfectionism, white supremacy, toxic relationships, both political and romantic? Also, when was the last time you centered your pleasure? When was the last time you allowed yourself to relax or Netflix and chill with yourself or your bae? Or are you too busy staying busy and chastising yourself for not being busy or involved enough? Black women, we are powerful. We get stuff done and every social justice movement wants our co-sign and physical and emotional labor, but what are we getting in return?

Are we demanding that our allies, lovers, and comrades do more on our behalf or do we resign ourselves to accepting crumbs of love, acceptance, and solidarity? As we denounce and say no to our oppression, I would like to challenge us all to say yes to our desires, our dreams, and our healing. The sacred “yes” is going to be very vital and important to our internal abolition. To who and what are we saying yes to, Black women? Are we saying yes to all parts of ourselves? When was the last time you let the little Black girl in you go out and have fun and play? Are you saying yes to the part of you that suffers from perfectionism? Are you offering that part of yourself compassion and permission to not be perfect? Every dope Black woman I know suffers from the perfectionist disease, but in reality our mediocre is most folks A+. Therefore, we can afford to relax! Are we saying yes to the part that wants love, but doesn’t always believe that we are worthy of love, but asking for the love we want anyways? Are you saying yes to your raggedy parts and still love it? Whose version of freedom are we centering? Whose pleasure are we centering? When was the last time you allowed yourself to be purely in your body and enjoy being in it and taking space? When was the last time you thanked your body for showing up and being the vehicle through which you get epic stuff done in the world?

Folks, we don’t have to set ourselves on fire to light our own way.

It is imperative that we work with the idea of internal abolition because unfortunately, the world doesn’t send the infantry to save women who look like us. When I look at this audience, I see many soldiers. In thinking about internal abolition, we must take good care of ourselves and offer that same love and attention to our sister-friends. It ain’t easy being a Black girl or a Black woman in this world, but it becomes more manageable when you have a badass Black girl squad to lean on. There is nothing like Black sisterhood, whether it comes from your blood sister, play sister, soror, or the beautiful Black woman that you call your lover.

Sisterhood is like a salve to the soul and we need to make more space for it. It is a powerful time to be Black and alive. Black power, Black collective power, Black female power is setting the world ablaze. As Black women caught in this matrix, we are both the architect and oracle. The liberation of others is inextricably tied to the liberation of Black women. We are worthy of taking up space and also worthy of laying our burdens down. Don’t let the movement rob you of your joy and your sanity. You deserve to have wellness because when you truly believe that #BlackWomenMatter, you will protect your #BlackGirlMagic and demand that folks come correct or not come at all.

One of my favorite lines in “Sula” is when Nel is asking Sula why she didn’t have any children and Sula responds, “I don’t want to make somebody else. I want to make myself.” As I close, I ask you to consider what self are you making? Is the self that you are making the kind of self that the 13-year-old you would be want to be friends with and emulate? Would your 16 year-old self think that you were awesome, dope, and fierce? Is the self that you are making one that you are radically in love with without qualifications and excuses? Please remember that you are the best thing that has ever happened to you and you are worthy of your own love and adoration.

You too can book me to speak at your school or organization. As always, if you appreciate my blog and the space that I take up on your timeline, please consider donating to my get free account paypal thefeministgtriote[at]gmail.com

]]>http://thefeministgriote.com/blackwomenmatter-internalabolition/feed/3Internal Abolitionhttp://thefeministgriote.com/internal-abolition/
http://thefeministgriote.com/internal-abolition/#commentsMon, 28 Dec 2015 16:21:04 +0000http://thefeministgriote.com/?p=2278“Fuck wondering if you’re lovable. Fuck asking someone else, “Am I there yet?” Fuck listening for the answer. Fuck waiting, alone, for a verdict that never comes. Don’t grow up to be one of those women with a perpetual question mark etched into her ... read more →]]>“Fuck wondering if you’re lovable. Fuck asking someone else, “Am I there yet?” Fuck listening for the answer. Fuck waiting, alone, for a verdict that never comes. Don’t grow up to be one of those women with a perpetual question mark etched into her brow: Am I good? Am I lovable? Am I enough?”

That quote is from the epic ass Ask Polly column entitled Why Don’t The Men I Date Ever Love Me, which is featured in the New Yorker and is written by Heather Havrilesky. It was published in September 2014 and I’ve probably read this article 10 times since then. When it first was published, I read it, I printed the article out, and took it home and at my next therapy session, I quoted the above quote to my beloved therapist, Lisa. It was the first time I had language to describe to Lisa that I no longer wanted to be that woman. Fast forward to December 2015, I think I may have finally broken ground on creating the foundation to becoming the woman who no longer has a permanently etched question mark on her brow.

Last month, I was invited by FIU North Women Center to give a keynote for their celebration of International Day of Violence Against Women which they centered on #BlackWomenMatter. Rarely are the psychological, emotional, spiritual, and physical well-being of Black women centered. Instead of preaching to the choir about why #BlackWomenMatter, I chose to center my keynote on “internal abolition,” a marvelous phrase that I heard Darnell Moore mention, while talking with bell hooks at New School on subject of from Moving from to Pain to Power.

The phrase Moving From Pain to Power convicted me on a cellular level. As a Black woman living in the United States of America, I am keenly aware of the ways in which I metastasize pain and trauma. There is the ancestral pain and trauma of being a descendant of enslaved folk. The cultural trauma that I have from being reared by immigrant parents, who migrated here on a boat. There is the pain and trauma of being a hyphenated American, the pain and trauma of being Black in U.S., and of course there is the pain and trauma that I personally acquired by simply living my life. However, in that talk, I heard bell hooks encouraging me to think about how can I move from pain to power in my own life. How can I tap into my inner power and create a situation in which I can thrive as a Black woman taking up space in this time and space context. I am of the opinion even in the most oppressive systems and circumstance folks can still practice resistance and exercise some agency.

Since hearing that phrase, I have been digesting it, metabolizing it, and trying to appropriate it into my being. What does it mean to be free? What is internal abolition? What is the work required to be a free Black woman in the U.S.? What is the blueprint for this freedom? Do I have the prerequisites to get this work done? It is possible for me to do this for me?

Here is an excerpt of my keynote that I am trying to put into praxis:

In the words of the Miami philospher Ebony Rhodes, “the only thing that is holding Black women back is who we are indebted to.” Who do you feel indebted to? Your past, your perfectionism, white supremacy, toxic relationships both political and romantic? Also, when was the last time you centered your pleasure. When was the last time you allowed yourself to relax and netflix and chill with yourself or your bae? Or are you too busy staying busy and chastising yourself for not being busy or involved enough? BW we are powerful we get stuff done and every social justice movement wants our co-sign and physical and emotional labor, but what are we getting in return? Are we demanding that our allies, lovers, and comrades do more on our behalf or do we resign ourselves to accepting crumbs of love, acceptance, and solidarity. As we denounce and say no to our oppression, I would like to challenge us all to say yes to our desires, our dreams, and our healing. The sacred yes is going to be very vital and important to our internal abolition. To who and what are we saying yes to Black women? Are we saying yes to all parts of ourselves? When was the last time you let the little Black girl in you go out and have fun and play…One of my favorite lines in Sula is when Nel is asking Sula why she didn’t have any children and Sula responds, “I don’t want to make somebody else. I want to make myself.

As we get ready to close 2015, I find myself willingly undergoing the beautiful, scary, overwhelming, work of deciding what self I am creating? I recently broken up with someone who I thought was the answer to my prayers, but in reality they were more like a painful insomniac episode and towards the end they became a nightmare. As an overly ambitious person, I fell in love with this persons ambition and the fact that they were borderline genius. But as the relationship matured, I found myself not being allowed to connect with other folks, being responsible for their feelings, being their social worker, and mammy figure. I found myself accepting verbal and emotional abuse and being in a constant state of fight or flight. My PTSD was weaponized against me and I ignored the signs and in therapy I made major excuses for this person. When I finally mustered up the courage to walk away (literally) from the situation, my therapist told me that she considered safety planning with me, but assessed that the situation did not quite warrant it. I sobbed when she told me that because it wasn’t until that moment that it hit me how knee deep in the bullshit I was.

Emotionally the situation definitely warranted a safety plan. I am being super vulnerable and candid in sharing this because as I figure out how to really love and accept myself fully, I want us to remember that Harriet Tubman set herself free first before she led others to freedom. Healthy people create healthy communities and also have healthy loving relationships. If #BlackLivesMatter then we must heal ourselves, be accountable to members of our community, and stop romanticizing the dysfunction that is too common place in our love spaces. In the words of Audre Lorde, “the personal is political.” In saying that we must decolonize our minds and reframe our understanding of love.

I am learning from reading the cult classic self-help book “The Road Less Traveled” by M. Scott Peck that “Self-love and love of others goes hand in hand but that ultimately they are indistinguishable… Love is as love does. Love is an act of will-namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love.”

Therefore, in my quest for internal abolition, I am asking myself: who do I love, why do I chose to love them, why do I chose to be in relationship with them? I needed to be reminded that in laying the foundation to love myself, I am also strengthening and expanding my ability to love others. A hard, painful truth, that I recently had to reconcile with was, is that my life is like an engine I must build as I continue to drive the car. For the first time in a very long time, I feel hopeful. I think that I may have finally overcome my dysthmia, though I suspect this is just one of a myriad of positive things that have come from my recent breakup. I am on my journey to be my own Harriet Tubman and free myself. I hope to see as many of you as possible on journey to wholeness and freedom.

P.S. The doors of my PayPal stay open feel free to donate thefeministgriote[at]@gmail.com

]]>http://thefeministgriote.com/internal-abolition/feed/3I woke up like this & I ain’t feeling it too much…http://thefeministgriote.com/i-woke-up-like-this-i-aint-feeling-it-too-much/
http://thefeministgriote.com/i-woke-up-like-this-i-aint-feeling-it-too-much/#respondFri, 11 Sep 2015 19:36:35 +0000http://thefeministgriote.com/?p=2269My birthday three years ago. I was a size 10/12 and I was happy with this size.

I swallowed the propaganda that my life is not where it should be, in part because of my weight. I am one of those women who think that ... read more →]]>

My birthday three years ago. I was a size 10/12 and I was happy with this size.

I swallowed the propaganda that my life is not where it should be, in part because of my weight. I am one of those women who think that once I lose weight, the world will be in HD, maybe even 3D. I am a perfectionist, like many awesome Black women I know, and my weight serves as a reminder that I am not truly perfect; that I have an Achilles heel; that my weakness, my kryptonite, my one obvious dereliction, is my weight.

I have been struggling with my weight since I was 12. When I was 12, my least favorite uncle got married and noted my weight was going to be an issue. So I did what all kids do when they hear negative feedback from an adult: I believed it, and made it my mission to fix myself. That was the official start to the war I waged with myself. It was also the beginning of treating myself like a perpetual project that needed fixing. If I fixed myself enough, I thought, I would be in America’s running for love, happiness, and success-and if nothing else, some fabulous clothes.

Fast forward to now: I am a grown ass woman who wants to change the relationship I have with my body and make space for healing and wholeness in my life. The biggest impediment to this relationship shift is my weight. For health reasons, I would love to be at least 30-40 pounds lighter. Sometimes I think to myself, “you are already a Black woman, brown-skinned, you have natural hair, you have radical politics, the least you can be is skinny!” Because of the white gaze, I am overly concerned with the amount of space I take up, and that extends to the amount of physical space I take up. On one hand, I want to take up less space. On the other, I want to practice taking up more space and feeling more entitled and worthy to do so. This is my conundrum. How do I acknowledge the fact that I should perhaps lose weight, but still love and honor myself in the process; not approaching this weight loss journey from the perspective that I’m a project that needs fixing.

I am perfect, whole, and complete. Perfect, whole, and complete people don’t treat themselves like a project and constantly compare their bodies to other women. The idea of saying-“losing weight for health reasons” makes me cringe-because I am healthy. I do have fibroids, but I am healthy. My gynecologist said it wouldn’t hurt for me to lose weight, which made me feel a type of way, but like many other Black women suffer with fibroids and we all ain’t fat, so…Science really cannot tell us what causes fibroids, but my very tall, slender, blonde, white doctor had no issue prescribing weight loss to me. She only examined my vagina and uterus and never ran a blood test, so she had no receipt of me being unhealthy. Again-despite these facts- my tall, slender, blonde, white woman doctor had no qualms prescribing weight loss as a cure- all to my fibroid situation.

When you live in a society that equates all of your failures and health issues to your weight, it is hard not to internalize that message and believe it.

This is me from earlier this year and I am a 16/18.

I truly desire to lose weight for reasons that have nothing to do with vanity. I would like to be able to bike longer, to run further (in the event there is an zombie apocalypse), and to feel more comfortable in my body when I am naked alone or with my bae. The truth is I have lost lots of weight before and people treated me better. Once, a cousin who lives several states away, called me and told me I was an inspiration to him, which made me uncomfortable. What I heard was, “you are back to being my pretty Southern cousin again.” I also felt like my dad was nicer to me, and of course people treated me like I had cracked some morse code. Folks treat you differently when you lose weight. Meanwhile, nothing in my life changed other than I ate better and had cooler clothes. #Moralofthestory is that I would like to lose weight and not feel guilty about the process and not have an unrealistic expectation about what my life will be once I drop the weight.

I do not want to feel guilty for leaving team #BBW or feel like I am losing weight for all the wrong reasons. I also don’t want to feel like I am a loser at life if I never weigh 150 pounds. I don’t want to feel undesirable because I am fat, thick, or whatever the terminology du jour is.

I would love to be a size 10/12 and know deep down in bone marrow that I am worthy of love and belonging no matter the size I am and that I am enough no matter how much physical space I take up.

I feel like I need help and community in this journey. Writing is a huge part of my healing process and I want to be honest in my writing. The dysthmia has not been helpful in my weight loss journey. On mornings when I am struggling, I don’t make it to Crossfit. I really like Crossfit because not only do I feel better when I leave, I also feel powerful lifting and doing the absurd workout.

So, I am going to chronicle my weight loss journey and let you folks know how I am doing. I need accountability partners and lots of love on this journey.

The doors of my PayPal stay open feel to donate thefeministgriote[at]@gmail.com

]]>http://thefeministgriote.com/i-woke-up-like-this-i-aint-feeling-it-too-much/feed/0What Happened FeministGriote, where you been?http://thefeministgriote.com/what-happened-feministgriote-where-you-been/
http://thefeministgriote.com/what-happened-feministgriote-where-you-been/#commentsWed, 02 Sep 2015 15:26:08 +0000http://thefeministgriote.com/?p=2262 I think about writing every single day. I start writing in my head, I go to my computer or cellphone to try and write,- and the bravery leaves. The words leave. The necessity to write leaves. This is my new normal, and it terrifies me.

I think about writing every single day. I start writing in my head, I go to my computer or cellphone to try and write,- and the bravery leaves. The words leave. The necessity to write leaves. This is my new normal, and it terrifies me.

These days, I light my altar to Dantor and sage my apartment, seeking clarity of mind and the courage,- I need to fight this invader that has infiltrated my mind and every day life. I am a writer and writers write, but what happens when you are a writer who is dealing with Dysthymia and struggles to believer their voice matters? That’s me. All the energy I have goes into surviving therefore, I don’t have energy to do the things I love. The things I love are the very things that promote thriving.

Dysthimia is a fancy way of saying that I occasionally get the blues. In medical terms, Dysthimia is low-grade chronic depression that can last up to two years, but it is not major depression.

According to WebMD the symptoms of dysthmia are as follows:

Sadness or depressed mood most of the day or almost every day

Loss of enjoyment in things that were once pleasurable

Major change in weight (gain or loss of more than 5% of weight within a month) or appetite

Insomnia or excessive sleep almost every day

Being physically restless or rundown in a way that is noticeable by others

Fatigue or loss of energy almost every day

Feelings of hopelessness or worthlessness or excessive guilt almost every day

Problems with concentration or making decisions almost every day

Recurring thoughts of death or suicide, suicide plan, or suicide attempt

I am happy to report that I am doing much better, but Black Girl Twitter has been plagued with major losses. Very popular bloggers and entrepreneurs have taken their lives due to their battle with depression. I am very apprehensive to share this information about myself, knowing any potential employer can Google my name, find my blog, and read this post, but I don’t want shame to rule my life. I don’t want to be forced into a corner, silent.

If you follow my tweets then you know I go to therapy weekly, and have been doing so for the past year. The catalyst for me going to therapy was work. Summer 2014, something traumatic happened at my job that emotionally leveled me and I needed help dealing with it. Blackness in a white work space can be very challenging, but coupled with having mental, emotional, or physical issues, makes the ability to show up and be your authentic self very hard.

Many of you have come to know this blog through my Twitter account and you have come to rely on my pop-culture critiques, my views on race, and of course, feminism. I miss this dialectic relationship. I wasn’t talking at you; we were learning and evolving together. I want this relationship back, but so many times I would try to write and I would be rendered immobilized by my fear and sadness that perhaps, I have lost my Black Girl Magic. Fear that I suck as a writer. Fear that I have nothing original to say. Fear that I am not worthy of writing. Between all the changes in my life, professional unrest, and the dysthymia, it was very easy to let fear rule me and silence me, but like my ancestral – mentor Audre Lorde said, “Your silence will not protect you.” I know this now, which is why I am breaking my silence. Some day’s, I am literally just trying to center myself in the truth of who I am and find peace and solace in it.

One other major event I was working on with my therapist led me to formally come out to my mother (a term that I abhor because I was living my life, doing me, and that term makes it seem like if the entire world doesn’t know you are gay or queer, then your love life is not legitimate, but here I am coming out in this blog post to you all. Oh the iron in this knee!) and to my shock, she didn’t throw me away. In truth, there is no word en Kreyol that is similar to the English word “queer.” The only word en Kreyol that speaks to women who love women is the word Madivinez, which is a slur en Kreyol, but oddly enough translates in English literally as “my divine.” So my Haitian immigrant mother has a divine, sacrilegious daughter who loves and lives differently. I am still trying to make sense of what it means to be the daughter that my mother probably never wanted, but still loved unconditionally by her.

My whole life I was convinced I was not loved fully, but I am happy to report that I am. I don’t know what to do with this information. I had a contingency plan for disaster. I didn’t have a plan for acceptance or love. As much as I hate to admit it, I did buy into the coming out propaganda. I thought my life was going to open up and I would reach the mountain top of self-actualization. The truth is, I am still overweight and struggling, my relationship with my mother is still on the mend, and I still have to show up to my life and do thework. I am practically a professional queer, so I wasn’t hiding. However, I am still trying to make peace and understand what it means to be out to my mother.

All this to say is that I missed writing and I missed you, reader. I understand that writing must also be part of my healing process. I purchased books and tried many things to rekindle my love of writing, but lately it has hit me that I just need to show up to my craft and not be attached to the outcome. So, I hope you will accept me back into your lives. I want to start blogging full-time again and I want to hear from you.

Back in August The Public Religion Research Institute published a study that really painted a grim picture of Americans social networks. That study showed that 91% of white Americans have an all white friend circle and only 5% of that circle consists of people of ... read more →]]>

Back in August The Public Religion Research Institute published a study that really painted a grim picture of Americans social networks. That study showed that 91% of white Americans have an all white friend circle and only 5% of that circle consists of people of color. However, Black Americans friend circles are 83% homogeneous, while eight percent of that circle is white and six percent their friend group is of another race. As a person who navigates the world as a Black woman, I would love to ask the white folks in this study some nuanced questions about what is their definition of friendship and how does it look like in praxis in their life? I am willing to bet good money that these good white folks who were polled about their POC friend circle, probably have far less than five percent. My definition of friendship is who are three crucial people you would call if you lost your job, got some devastating news from the doctor, or if you found out that your boo was cheating on you and you needed to phone a friend, who would that friend be? I recently had a talk with a white woman who does diversity and inclusion work and she admitted that she has no POC as close friends. Again, this is a person who uses their privilege to educate other whites on their privilege, but has no real deep bonds with POC outside of business. I am of the opinion that this is very common within white America.

Being white in the U.S. allows one the option to opt out of diversity, while the livelihoods of POC in this country does not afford such an option. POC cannot limit our interactions with whites, even when we find these interactions to be triggering and in worst normalized cases, deadly!

The only way that stereotypes can thrive is in isolation from the other, when people purposefully keep themselves segregated and uniformed about the other. Once you bring folks together and they get to commune with each other in a healthy and organic way, in a way that does not tokenize the other, stereotypes dissipate. However, as a Black woman who is currently navigating interracial friendships with white folks, I can say that these friendships are hard. Interracial friendships present unique challenges and in many cases can be very emotionally taxing for the POC. Unfortunately, due to white privilege and white supremacy white people are not really prepared on how to engage with POC in a way that does not make the POC feel like a cultural broker.

“Racism is ubiquitous,” which means eventually there will be a time in the friendship where the white persons privilege will do harm, obstruct, or simply take up too much space. When these infractions happen, more often than not the Black person will have to call in, check, read, or correct, the white person and that is where typically the friendship ends, changes drastically, or in some rare circumstances, it survives and gets fortified! The reason these friendships come to an end, is because often times white people cannot emotionally stand being corrected by a person of color. White people struggle not to center their hurt feelings when they have been told they made a racist comment. In many cases white people view their hurt feelings akin to oppression. It also must be stated that it is not easy for a POC to call out/in a friend, who has made a racist comment. However, more often than not, because white people are so accustomed to Black bodies being in service to them, especially Black female bodies, we are seen as the mammy figures who must suture the white persons ego.

I am of the opinion that white people who have a robust POC circle should be more vigilant of their privilege than the white person who does not. Sometimes closeness can breed a dangerous form of familiarity. It is like the cisgender hetero woman who has a bastion of gay male friends, but thinks she can appropriate gay men’s lingo and speak for gay men. Proximity to Blackness is not an excuse to NOT police your whiteness.

Whites who are given access into POC spaces (yes being a white person with access to heavily POC spaces is a sacred privilege) and who have POC folks in their life who are willing to go against the cultural narrative that says, you can’t trust white people, must honor this privilege by making themselves malleable to correction. Being an ally is not an identity it is a process. There is no Maslow hierarchy of allyship. There is no level of self-actualization in being an anti-racist ally that renders you above reproach and critique. However, because being an ally is a process, I have included the levels of this process as I see it.

Like Meek Mills the rapper said, “there’s levels to this shit.”

Level 098- recognizing your white privilege recognizing there is NOTHING radical about a white person recognizing that there is such an institution called white privilege. You would have to tell yourself many lies and commit to an extreme level of willful ignorance, to ignore the fact that you have won the race lottery if you were born white on this planet!

Level 099-willingness to unpack your white privilege okay so you realized that you are well intentioned liberal parents, did you a disservice by perpetuating the violent mythology of color-blind theory to you and you have survived the discovering you have white privilege now what? Now you as the white person must unpack your duffel bag of privilege and educate yourself on how you profit from this privilege and how others suffer from not having this privilege. This means you have to read books (preferably by POC), attend workshops (preferably by POC), and get out in the world open and open your eyes and pay attention. Do not expect POC to be your designated teacher, you have to put in the sweat equity and commit to learning.

Level 101-willingness to scrutinize your whiteness and recognize that white people have a race and in doing so white folks should racialize their perceptions of themselves and each other. Scrutinize your whiteness meaning you need to complicate your definition of whiteness and how you see whiteness. Do not fall prey to the Abraham Lincoln disease. Abraham Lincoln was a segregationist, he believed Black folks should be paid to work, but also believed in the superiority of white folks over Black folks. So check your psyche and your unconscious beliefs where you believe that white people are inherently better, more skilled, smarter, more honest, and more human than POC.

Level 200-willingness to be an ally to POC/willingness to use white privilege to make space for POC to speak for themselves (note allies do NOT speak for POC, we have agency and can speak for ourselves). This is self explanatory!

Level 300- willingness to speak to other whites about racism and challenge other whites to racialize themselves and see themselves as part of the conversation on race. Also, on this level a white person MUST be willing to be corrected when their privilege rears its head and be committed to not positing their hurt feelings above this correction and NOT treating their hurt feelings like an oppression. Okay, this where things usually go left and where lots of damage is done to POC. First and foremost, POC have great faith and hope that white people not only can understand racism, but that they can also be great allies in dismantling systemic racism. It this hope and faith that keeps some of us POC willing to engage and sometimes teach white folks about racism. However, because all white people were socialized in a racist society, ALL white people are racist. Now, that is not an eternal state of being. Mistakes will happen this does not mean you are failure, it means you have a privilege and it reared its head and it needed to be brought to your attention. At this stage of the ally process, you should be less concerned about being called a racist and more concerned about remedying triggering racist interactions and comments. You must understand that as a white person you come to the topic of race from an intellectual stand-point and from a a place of extreme privilege. While, racism for POC is not theory it not intellectual, it is a lived experience that is sometimes fatal. Most folks do not like to be corrected, but correction is what makes us better and it also signifies that someone thinks you are capable of doing better than what you are currently manifesting. So, take the challenge lean into the discomfort for it is in that discomfort healing and understanding is waiting to greet you.

Level 400-willingness to divest from white supremacy (the use of white supremacy here has nothing to do with Neo-Nazi’s or the KKK. It is about being keenly aware of how global whiteness functions and how to be white is considered the default position and therefore means to be human and all others must qualify fore their humanity.) In lamens terms decenter your whiteness.

CEU’s (Continuing Education)-knowing that being an ally is a process and not an identity and like Chimamanda Adichie said, “racism should not ever happened so you don’t get a cookie for reducing it.”

These friendships can work and can help to heal cultural and historical wounds on both sides. Friendship offers a different level of intimacy and partnership that romantic relationship often lack and struggle to maintain. In order for interracial friendships to work, both parties must be willing to address the power dynamics of the friendship and both parties must be willing to be vulnerable with each other about what they can or cannot deal with within the friendship space.

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]]>http://thefeministgriote.com/a-guide-to-allyship-interracial-friendship/feed/8Motherhood and intersectionality; Black kids need more than love to survive in a racialized world!http://thefeministgriote.com/motherhood-and-intersectionality-black-kids-need-more-than-love-to-survive-in-a-racialized-world/
http://thefeministgriote.com/motherhood-and-intersectionality-black-kids-need-more-than-love-to-survive-in-a-racialized-world/#respondWed, 08 Oct 2014 17:38:49 +0000http://thefeministgriote.com/?p=2208Jennifer Cramblett and Amanda Zinkon the white lesbian Midwest couple have made major news because they are suing a sperm bank for giving them the sperm of an African-American male, instead of that of a blue-eyed blonde-haired white man that they requested. This story has garnered ... read more →]]>Jennifer Cramblett and Amanda Zinkon the white lesbian Midwest couple have made major news because they are suing a sperm bank for giving them the sperm of an African-American male, instead of that of a blue-eyed blonde-haired white man that they requested. This story has garnered lots of media attention as well as some interesting commentary on social media and online publications. If the devil is in the details, surely the divine is in the nuance. I wanted to take a nuanced look at very complicated situation. Here are the facts of the case:

This lesbian couple paid to have sperm of a white man and specified the kind of white man they wanted, one that was blonde-haired and blue-eyed so that the child can look like them.

The service they paid for was not rendered.

These are two white lesbian women who live in the Midwest who will now have to raise a biracial child in a highly racialized and racist America.

Someone made a gross medical mistake at the sperm bank and misread donor 380 for 330, which fundamentally changed the race of their child.

We live in a litigious society where one can sue a company for gross negligence, misconduct, and for making egregious mistakes.

So these are the facts of this case and after watching Jennifer Cramblett on the Chris Hayes show, I feel for this white woman and her partner. However, more specifically, I feel for Payton the biracial child at the center of this debacle. I am a Black woman in her child-bearing years and I am not sure if I will have children, but when I do allow myself to sit with the idea of having kids, I must say that the idea of raising a Black child in the U.S. scares me to death! If you want to raise a healthy, whole, and well-adjusted Black child in America it is gong to require lots of strategy and intention. If you are a Black person raising a Black child you must make sure that you buy your Black kids books that affirm their identity and watch shows that affirm their identity. You have to make sure that the community they will be raised in and schooled in will make space for their Blackness however, your child chooses to perform their Blackness. As a Black parent raising a Black child you must take it upon yourself to teach your Black kids their real history and teach them that their history does not begin at the point of slavery. As a Black parent raising a Black child you have to try and find the perfect balance of talking to your kids about race and racism, without not making them hyper vigilant and fearful of all white people. As a parent of a Black child you have to find a loving way to manage your child’s hair that will instill self-love and pride and not feelings of self-loathing. And perhaps the most crucial thing that a Black parent of a Black child must do is speak to their child about state violence and how to interact with arms of the state such as racist white cops, in hopes that they will not be killed by the state. Beysus forbid that your child identifies as lesbian, gay, bisexual transgender/gender non-conforming, or is differently-abled in some way. This adds another layer of complication to ones Blackness. There is a litany of things that Black parents must discuss, navigate, and negotiate while raising a Black child in the U.S. and you must do all of this against the backdrop of a white supremacist society. Parenting by itself ain’t easy, doing it in high definition and in color ain’t no cake walk! Personally, I appreciate the honesty of Jennifer Cramblett and her partner. The fact is if parenting a Black child in the U.S. is daunting for Black parents, then it makes sense that white people should really, really, really take stock of what it means to raise a child who will not have the benefits of white privilege. It is very rare that one hears white people readily admit that whiteness may actually cause harm to a situation rather than uplift and upgrade a situation.

Jennifer Cramblett said, the lawsuit she is lodging against this sperm bank is not about race, but about “wrongful birth and breach warranty.” This where my empathy turns into critical race analysis, Cramblett and her partner now must think about how they must incorporate Black culture into their life, a concept that up until the birth of Payton their white privilege afforded them the luxury of not having to think about. This couple now must drive to another part of town to get proper hair care for her biracial child, who has Black people’s hair. The parents recognize that Payton will not be affirmed in their immediate community and realize that they cannot teach her about her Black heritage. Because although Black people have been in America for 500+ years and helped build the Americas, our history is not taught and white people, some Black people, and everyone in between is clueless about the Black folks collective contribution to society. Cramblett also admits that she is well aware that she has bigoted family members and fears how Payton will be received by them. These are all deep and real issues and I do not fault them at all for their concerns. But the moral of the story is that this is most certainly about race. Payton’s race changes the game for these white parents and highlights how no parenting book or good intentions can ever prepare white folks for the challenge of raising a Black child in a racist society.

Back in 1972, The Association of Black social workers made this statement about transracial adoptions:

The National Association of Black Social Workers has taken a vehement stand against the placement of black children in white homes for any reason. We affirm the inviolable position of black children in black families where they belong physically, psychologically and culturally in order that they receive the total sense of themselves and develop a sound projection of their future.

Ethnicity is a way of life in these United States, and the world at large; a viable, sensitive, meaningful and legitimate societal construct. This is no less true nor legitimate for black people than for other ethnic groups. . . .

The socialization process for every child begins at birth and includes his cultural heritage as an important segment of the process. In our society, the developmental needs of Black children are significantly different from those of white children. Black children are taught, from an early age, highly sophisticated coping techniques to deal with racist practices perpetrated by individuals and institutions. These coping techniques become successfully integrated into ego functions and can be incorporated only through the process of developing positive identification with significant black others. Only a black family can transmit the emotional and sensitive subtleties of perception and reaction essential for a black child’s survival in a racist society.

As trained social worker, I completely understand where my fellow colleagues where coming from in 1972. The National Black Association of Social Workers no longer espouses these views, but it does not mean that these issues are less salient in this Obama era. “Racism is ubiquitous,” and we live in a very racialized country where we do not interact with folks across racial lines outside of work. The average white person has one Black “friend.” I put friends in quotes because, I almost certain that if you asked that Black person if they considered that white person a “friend,” they would probably say no. You invite friends to your family dinners, birthday parties, kids graduation, and you hold space with them when they have lost a loved one, ended a long-term relationship, or just got fired. Something tells me that there isn’t much of that going on across racial lines. Because I am social worker, I take major umbrage with the law suit only because this may one day communicate to Payton that because she is a biracial child who will not be able to pass for white, that she is not enough. She will one day have to read the legal documents surrounding this case, read the commentary, and watch past interviews with her mother essentially decreeing all the reasons why being Black in American is dangerous and undesirable.

The brilliant writer Ta-Nehesi Coates tweeted , funny how white woman who ended with a black kid is basically suing for reparations.” In essence Cramblett is indeed suing for reparations, because she is not blinded by her white privilege, nor has she bought into that post-racial America bullshit. Cramblett and her partner know that raising a female child with any proximity to Blackness in a white supremacist society is not going to be an easy task, the mothers of Aiyna Jones, Rekisha Boyd, and Islan Nettles. My hope is that this white family finds Payton a mentor, Black play group, and/or an affirming village that will help undo the bullshit and damage that seems almost inevitable.

]]>http://thefeministgriote.com/motherhood-and-intersectionality-black-kids-need-more-than-love-to-survive-in-a-racialized-world/feed/0The Humanity & reality behind #StrugglePlateshttp://thefeministgriote.com/the-humanity-reality-behind-struggleplates/
http://thefeministgriote.com/the-humanity-reality-behind-struggleplates/#commentsFri, 29 Nov 2013 01:39:24 +0000http://thefeministgriote.com/?p=2197It is the day after Thanksgiving or Genocidal Day . If you are fortunate enough, you may have some scrumptious leftovers that you will be feasting on for the next couple of days. On a major holiday like Thanksgiving FB, Twitter, & Instagram is swarming ... read more →]]>It is the day after Thanksgiving or Genocidal Day . If you are fortunate enough, you may have some scrumptious leftovers that you will be feasting on for the next couple of days. On a major holiday like Thanksgiving FB, Twitter, & Instagram is swarming with pictures of food. This can be both a good and bad thing. Since the advent of Twitter/IG it has become almost obligatory that you take a picture of the delicious food you are consuming. But lately, I have seen tweets of people lamenting that they would love to share a picture of what they are eating, but they are afraid of the slander and the shade that may follow if they pick the wrong filter or if the food is not photographed well.

According, to social media users food that does not picture well or doesn’t look “pretty” is somehow inherently “bad” food that doesn’t taste good. Furthermore, the people on social media also assert that food made with cheap products, is also flavorless food. Thus the perfect storm was brewing and out of that the hashag#struggleplate was born. #Struggleplate describes food that is “ugly” and cheaply made. There is also an IG account called “cookingforbae” that collects pictures of “ugly” food for the sole purpose of trolling and judging the foods that people eat.

I am of the belief that food is not only personal, it is also political. When 47 millions or roughly 14% of American households are currently food insecure and rely of SNAP (food stamps) to feed themselves and their family, there is no denying that politics plays a huge issue in the matter. Essentially, the United States has made a conscious decision to not combat food insecurity, which is a bold political stance made obvious when Congress voted to cut the SNAP program. The average recipient of SNAP benefits has to make due with $1.49 per meal. The reason I bring up SNAP in the discussion of #struggleplates is because most Americans don’t have the luxury of being “foodies” or “ethical vegans.” It takes an extreme amount of privilege to be able to eat out multiple times during the week and eat at swanky restaurants, in over-prived gentrified areas. It also takes an extreme amount of privilege to live in an area that has quality grocery stores that is well stocked with fruits and vegetables. It also takes an extreme amount of privilege to be able to cut animal products from your diet, especially when you live in a food desert, are chronically poor, and when eating what is convenient has become a compulsory act of survival. When you are struggling to feed yourself choices as at it concerns to food becomes a luxury!

Whenever, I see a #struggleplate hashtag I cringe. I cringe because I feel that it is very disrespectful to pass judgement on what people eat. As stated I earlier, food is very political and personal. Food provides comfort, nourishment, and sustenance all things needed for basic human survival. #StrugglePlates have a poverty porn and ethnocentric lens to then. I am Haitian-American and I eat certain foods that may not photograph well no matter what filter I use, but there is no doubt that the food is flavorful! It is ethnocentric to judge someones plate of food simply because you can’t decipher what was used to create the food. Poverty porn allows us to troll poor people who dare use boxed mac n’ cheese or hot dogs to make a meal. Shaming the poor the is an American hobby, but many of us feel exceptionally entitled to shame the foods that people eat. We have no issues with labeling food as either good, bad, clean, and unclean. The politics of religion and the medical community definitely dictates how we police the food practices of other. However, never do we consider the circumstances that dictate why people eat what they eat?

Truth of the matter is some people are literally struggling to eat and that is not a laughing matter. Food for thought!

I really did not want to write a reactionary blog post about the disgusting article on selfies, that the not-so-feminist site Jezebel posted yesterday. I tweeted my thoughts about the article and thought that would be the end of it for me. But this morning I re-read the article and knew that I wanted to add to the larger conversation about selfies. The post by Jezebel was very judgmental, myopic, and rooted in anti-feminism. A beautiful Twitter moment came out of that ridiculous post which was started by @thewayoftheheid, #feministselfies was born to counteract all that was wrong with the post. My main reasoning for not wanting to write a reactionary piece is because it is exhausting. Literally, there is not a week that doesn’t go by where a mainstream white feminist blog site does not say or do something extremely racist and egregiously offensive about women of color. However, I am reminded by the words of Audre Lorde, “I write for those women who do not speak, for those who do not have a voice because they were so terrified, because we are taught to respect fear more than ourselves. We’ve been taught that silence would save us, but it won’t.” In the Jezebel article the blogger writes:

“Selfies aren’t empowering; they’re a high tech reflection of the fucked up way society teaches women that their most important quality is their physical attractiveness.”

On the surface I agree somewhat with the blogger, yes society does put an enormous value on the way women look. The media also invests an extreme amount of time and money to ensure that all women irrespective of race, class, gender, body size, and ability feel pressured to look like the one version of beautiful allowed by society. The blogger in her sentence fails to make space and understand that not all people who identify as women are allowed to see themselves as beautiful, desirable, sexy, or fit for human consumption. The writer is a white woman and so she has the luxury of being tired of seeing her reflection reflected back to her from the media, politics, and globally. So I am sure to her another selfie of a white woman is not revolutionary, but to me selfies by Black women of all shapes/shades/gender presentation/expression is pretty fucking awesome and revolutionary!

The reason it is revolutionary and empowering to see selfies of beautiful Black women is because proper representation of people who look like me is nowhere near the point of over saturation. The internet is the only place where I can see women who look like me freely. I don’t have to wait for the bevy of white magazines to have pity on me and show me a white washed version of myself in print. Social media allows for people of color, queer folks, fats, femmes, trans* folks, and differently-abled folks to find proper representation of ourselves sans gatekeepers. Sites like IG/tumblr democratizes beauty and makes it accessible to us. For e.g.

If you go on IG you can search any hashtag you want and find endless people, real people who do not fit the mainstream definition of beautiful, but how are beautiful nonetheless and confident. There was a time I thought that selfies were obnoxious and that the people who over used them were narcasisstic and ridiculous. Upon further examination, I realized that I was projecting my stuff unto others. My struggle to accept myself was clouding my vision therefore, when I saw others who were unabashed and deliberate with their self-love and acceptance it made me uncomfortable. The fact that people who are maligned, marginalized, and strategically erased find the courage to make the deliberate choice of seeing themselves as beautiful, is both astonishing and miraculous. Many of us did not grow up hearing positive affirmations about ourselves, never heard genuine compliments unless it was pre-packaged in an insult e.g. pretty for a dark skin girl, you have pretty face for a fat girl, or you don’t look like a Haitian.

Social media for the marginalized allows us to dictate and shape what is beautiful without the white gaze and it decenters whiteness.

Further, self-taken digital portraits are typically posted on social media, ostensibly with the intent of getting people to respond to them — that’s what social media is. In that respect, selfies aren’t expressions of pride, but rather calls for affirmation.

Fat people, queer people, trans* people, femmes, disabled people, POC need and deserve affirmation too! For many of us taking selfies is an exercise in putting our self-love into praxis. The act of loving, seeing, and accepting oneself in real time. Also, so what if people take pride in the likes and comments that their selfies garner?! There is nothing wrong or gross about freely accepting compliments. Folks need to stop pathologizing those who relish in the compliments that they receive. It takes lots of work and practice to be able to freely accept a compliment, especially when you struggle to see yourself as worthy and never was accustomed to receiving them! Black feminists coined the phrase “the personal is political” (no matter what Wikipedia tells you a white women DID NOT coin that phrase) and indeed taking selfies is a personal act deeply rooted in the radical politics of self-love. If someone can’t see that that, it simply means that their mainstream pretty, thin, & skin privilege is getting in the way of that.

Feminism is about dismantling patriarchal power structures, ending misogyny/sexism, and making space for those who are outside the margins of society and bringing them front and center. Attacking selfies and those who take them shouldn’t be an item on the feminist agenda!

*Updated to reflect that @thewayoftheheid started the hashtag #feministselfie 11/22/2013 4:26 pm EST

]]>http://thefeministgriote.com/the-radical-politics-of-selfies/feed/33All critique of Miley isn’t hatred rooted in slut-shaminghttp://thefeministgriote.com/all-critique-of-miley-isnt-hatred-rooted-in-slut-shaming/
http://thefeministgriote.com/all-critique-of-miley-isnt-hatred-rooted-in-slut-shaming/#commentsSat, 05 Oct 2013 15:46:23 +0000http://thefeministgriote.com/?p=2164Yesterday I was called “whorephobic” anti-sex workers and accused of asserting a privileged view point becase I tweeted the following, “Sinead gave Miley some sound advice.” Not sure which or what privileged stand point I was espousing, but that is Twitter for you, people hurl ... read more →]]>Yesterday I was called “whorephobic” anti-sex workers and accused of asserting a privileged view point becase I tweeted the following, “Sinead gave Miley some sound advice.” Not sure which or what privileged stand point I was espousing, but that is Twitter for you, people hurl insults at you sans context. To my recollection, I have never been afraid of “whores” especially since as a Black woman historically, we have always been labeled as being hyper-sexual creatures who will mate and procreate with anyone. I also don’t take umbrage with “whores” because I have been called worse by own members of my family and community, it is hard to fear what you’re actively and currently living/surviving. Every single time I dare to be in a public space, I am in danger of becoming public fodder. Who will ask to touch a white woman’s hair? I am also more likely than a white woman to be gunned down “justifiably” by the police. The leading cause of death for Black girls and women ages 15-35 is intimate partner violence. Therefore, fearing “whores”or the label is not even on my radar of important things to check for because as you can see my plate is full!

Furthermore, as a woman whose felt forced to be intimate with partners for a myriad of survival reasons, manufacturing “slut” shame is not really a hobby that I would indulge in. With that said, I have no desire to reclaim, march for, 0r defend the word “slut.” I have no desire to do so for the same reasons I don’t want anyone calling me a “lady.” The freedom to fall from grace and from the pedestal of virtuosity is a white woman’s problem. White performance of femininity is considered the global archetype of femininity. Women of color and more specifically Black women have never been deemed as full citizens who can exercise agency let alone sexual agency.

Recently the letter that Sinead O’ Conner penned to Miley Cyrus has really divided the feminists community. If you choose to read Sinead’s letter as a slut-shaming letter than there is ample evidence in the letter that you can stand on to make that point. But if you complicate the reading of the letter, you can read it as a woman who barely survived the music industry, trying to offer up some sage advice to a younger singer. But in our ageist American culture young people are not encouraged to heed the advice of older folks and most older people don’t respect the agency of younger people. Now again, I am not going to defend Sinead or Cyrus, but I do want to critique the myriad of bold-faced hypocrisies that is surrounding this vey privileged conversation.

First and foremost, everybody and their momma is caping in the defense of Destiny Hope Cyrus aka Miley Cyrus. A vast majority of white feminists have barely called Miley out on her cultural appropriation and how she uses Black women as props, but everyone is defending her sexual agency. As a feminist I do not believe in a one-size fits all form of liberation. What is so liberating about straddling a wrecking ball naked and simulating oral sex on a sledge hammer? Miley’s act in that video feeds into the larger narrative that mainstream feminism force feeds down every woman’s throats. The belief that empowerment and agency can only be summoned up through your crouch. This type of singular narrative is dangerous because not all women are overtly sexual, sexual in the same way, or desire sex. What also makes this narrative dangerous is the lack of consideration in the flip-side of the argument. Are men also “empowered” by sex in the same way as it is believed that women are “empowered” by sex? Women who don’t subscribe to this type of “sex-positivity” often run the risk of being labeled a prude or even worse seen as engaging in slut-shaming!

In the book Female Chauvinist Pig by Ariel Levy she writes, “If Male Chauvinist Pigs regarded women as pieces of meat, we would outdo them and be Female Chauvinist Pigs: women who make sex objects out of other women and ourselves…we have determined that ALL (emphasis mine) empowered women must be overtly and publicly sexual…” I have no qualms with sex, sexy, or nudity nor do I have any problems with pop-stars being sexy. One of my favorite artists happens to be Beysus who performs almost exclusively in a bedazzled onesie. There is a slippery slope between sexual liberation and one simply objectifying themselves for pay and calling it “freedom.” What makes Miley at 20 a “movement” or blueprint for female empowerment? Treating a sledge hammer as a phallic symbol will liberate who and where? We must lean into and consider the gray areas of this over-simplified ideology. A pop-star like Janelle Monae in my opinion is very sexy and is also exerting and exercising her agency and why aren’t we collectively heralding this as brave, powerful, or a “movement?”

There is a knee-jerk reaction among mainstream feminists to be supremely protective and very vocal in the defense of Miley, all without offering any real critical analysis of her behavior. Miley’s response to Sinead was extremely problematic and rooted in ableist language, Cyrus essentially made fun of Sinead’s past mental illness. Because nothing is more empowering than using a woman’s mental illness as a tool of shaming and silencing. When now 32 year-old Beyonce exercised her agencyto name her tour “The Mrs. Carter” tour many white women took personal offense with that and felt that Beyonce was tarnishing the feminists brand. Now in full disclosure, I have critiqued Beyonce from a feminists stand-point (proof that you can critique something or someone that you like). However, I think it is ridiculous to shame a woman for naming her tour after her husband. I also find it interesting that many white feminists publicly shamed Rihanna for exercising her agencywhen she rekindled her relationship with Chris Brown. Didn’t Rihanna have agency? October is Domestic Violence awareness month and it is a fact that many feminists know that it takes several times for a woman to leave an abusive partner, but no one seemed to remember or care when judgement and vitriol was being thrown Ri Ri’s way.

The truth is that mainstream feminists seem to believe that there is only one form of feminism and and there is only one prescriptive way to perform this feminism, an idea steeped in extreme privilege. Everything is being divided into binaries, even though, I thought progressive feminists hated binaries. Critiquing Miley Cyrus can’t relegate to you to being a simple “hater” or being “whorephobic” or worse “anti-sex-workers.” Sinead never mentioned sex-workers therefore, I am totally confused how that conclusion came to be. Feminism is a sociopolitical lens and since all women aren’t oppressed in the same way therefore, we all can’t be liberated in the same way.Our lives our highly interesected and nuanced and so should the dominant discourse around feminism be.

Mainstream feminist like to gate keepers are only concerned with protecting those who have the same amount of skin and class privilege as they do. It has become very chic to be pro-sex workers and march to reclaim the word “slut,” but there isn’t the same gusto or concern to march for and with fast-food workers, Wal-Mart workers, migrant workers, or domestic workers demanding better pay and working conditions. The rights of all workers should be of concern to all feminist, especially since we know women and children are likely to be poor which further exacerbates the feminization of poverty. Lady Gaga dons a hot-pink Burqua no one rushes in the defense of Muslim women, Michelle Williams (the white one) appears in red-face in a magazine and there is no organized effort to check her appropriation of Indigenous people. Ain’t they women too?

You see when your body is highly politicized and racialized there isn’t much you can do to command respect. Everything you do is policed and can and will be appropriated. Trans* women of color are being murdered at an alarming rate for daring to be women of color in public spaces, but the mainstream discourse on this issue is nil. Mainstream feminists aren’t interested in having complicated conversations about the singular road to “empowerment” that they’ve constructed, and who can afford to politically and socially travel down that road?

]]>http://thefeministgriote.com/all-critique-of-miley-isnt-hatred-rooted-in-slut-shaming/feed/10The Curious Case of Antoine Dodsonhttp://thefeministgriote.com/the-curious-case-of-antoine-dodson/
http://thefeministgriote.com/the-curious-case-of-antoine-dodson/#commentsWed, 18 Sep 2013 21:24:27 +0000http://thefeministgriote.com/?p=2127I just became the happiest man alive!! My beautiful Queen and I are having a baby!!

— Kevin Antoine Dodson (@antoinedodson24) September 18, 2013

One of our favorite internet sensations Antoine Dodson who became famous for protecting his sister from a near sexual assault, has announced that ... read more →]]>

I just became the happiest man alive!! My beautiful Queen and I are having a baby!!

One of our favorite internet sensations Antoine Dodson who became famous for protecting his sister from a near sexual assault, has announced that he is expecting a baby. Gay people have kids and have been having kids since forever which isn’t a big deal, but what makes Dodson’s admission shocking is that he is expecting this child with a cis-gendered woman. Back in May of this year Antoine Dodson made a controversial announcement via his FB page

I have to renounce myself, I’m no longer into homosexuality I want a wife and family, I want to multiply and raise and love my family that I create. I could care less about the fame and fortune, I’ve giving all that up to know the true history of the bible. For I am the True Chosen Hebrew Israelite descendant of Judah. And as True Israel I know that there are certain things we just can’t do. And I totally understand that now. I don’t need a Mercedes Benz, I don’t need a big house in Beverly Hills all I need is the Most High and my family (Israel). I have been awaken by the great and so should you. Let’s be delivered from the wickedness of the world and live the way we should. The Most High bless all and have a beautiful evening. Israel wake up and take full power of who you are. I’m ready are you?

Antoine Dodson also spoke in-depth about his decision to embrace heterosexuality here. Both Antoine’s tweet and FB admission garnered lots of negative comments from homophobes, liberals, and LGBTQ allies who felt that their indignation of Antoine was righteous. Antoine Dodson divorcing himself from his gayness and embracing heterosexuality brings up many issues that need to be unpacked. To begin with, I am a firm believer in people owning the rights, terms, and conditions of their own narratives. When it comes to people and their sexual orientation, gender identification, and gender presentation, I believe in the individuals right to self identify as they wish and in their right to lead the discussion on their own narrative. Now as a person who has an MSW, I don’t believe in reparative therapy or conversion therapy aka “praying the gay way.” With that said, there are somethings that Antoine Dodson is saying in reference to his same-sex loving past that I find problematic. Dodson’s use of the word “wickedness” gives me alarm and the fact that he has embraced an oppressive God concept that he feels requires compulsory heterosexuality from him. However, I am not Antoine Dodson’s therapists, but I think there is much that we can and should learn collectively from this situation.

I truly believe that gender, gender expression, and sexuality is fluid. Therefore, if we truly believe that gender, gender expression, and sexuality is fluid why do we become so critical and hateful towards those who embrace the fluidity of their varying identities? One of the ‘q’s’ in LGBTQQ does stand for questioning, which is a valid epoch in ones sexual journey. Because people who identify as queer or gay have been reared in a heterosupremacist society many of them have had heterosexual couplings, which doesn’t minimize who they are as gay or queer folk. We live in a society that makes it compulsory that people act on their sexuality and identify as either gay or straight. The only people allowed to be bisexuals are women, and those women must fit a narrow perception of beauty in order to be deemed acceptable bisexuals. Therefore, men especially Black men, are never allowed to identify as bisexual. We never give space to the fact some people may in fact be asexual, demisexual, pansexual, or pomosexual.

Antoine Dodson is juggling a myriad of intersecting identities. He is juggling his male identity, Black identity, sexual identity, and his identity as a person of faith. All of which he is having to do so against the backdrop of a hetero/white supremacist society, that confers humanity only to whites. Instead of policing Antoine Dodson, we as members of society need to examine the ways in which we create unsafe spaces for people to speak their truth and embrace their fluidity. Heterosexuality is worshipped, especially heterosexuality that is state sanctioned i.e. marriage. We reward married people especially those who procreate and we give married people who’ve procreated tax shelters. We also reward married people socially by not passing judgment on their relationship and family structure. In a society that privileges compulsory heterosexuality, internalized homophobia shouldn’t alarm us, we should expect it and have a contingency plan to help those battling it.

I am not fan of self-hatred and people suppressing their true self, but I refuse to ignore the fact that Antoine Dodson was reared in a society that taught him to that be gay is to be sick, perverted, or “wicked.” Our critique and ire should be reserved for the systems at play that makes Antoine and other gay people feel defective and less than.